by Bryce Edwards

The Maori Party and the Mana Party’s decision to put aside their differences and enter into a pact will lead once again to a new order in Maori politics. Labour’s fragile hold on six of the seven Maori seats is now seriously in doubt. In this guest blog post, John Moore argues that all the Maori seats are up for grabs, due to the fluid and dynamic nature of the Maori electorate. Yet this dynamism within the Maori electorates is more-often-than-not under-analysed by political commentators who over-emphasise the “traditional” aspects that are seen as shaping the indigenous political world in New Zealand. [Read more below]

24 November 2016

Modern social-liberalism – in the form of identity politics – has been exposed as an elitist scam. Gender politics, LGBTQI+ movements, and tino rangatiratanga struggles were all presented as a way to alleviate the poverty, oppression and discrimination of those at the bottom of society. Instead these ideologies have only acted to elevate a few coming from various subjugated groups.

For example, gender politics has been mainly about putting middle class women into positions of power within the political and business world. The LGBTQI+ movement has been easily incorporated into the market economy with “pink capitalism” and with a normalisation of rainbow diversity. And tino rangatiratanga struggles seem to have only led to a few more brown faces amongst the rich listers.

Clearly identity politics – whether in the form of feminism, kaupapa Maori politics or LGBTQI+ movements – has not helped the majority of subjugated people who are at the bottom of society.

So, if identity politics has only helped an elite of those from subjugated sectors of society, is an anti-Establishment class-centred politics then the way forward? The identitarian-left argues that those who focus on material wellbeing, economics and class politics act to ignore other social divisions that exist under capitalism? A class-centred analysis is seen as crudely reducing questions of gender inequality, homophobia and racism to questions of economics and capitalism? Guest blogger John Moore explores these critiques of class politics, and offers an analysis that rejects both the crude economism of the traditional left and the politics of contemporary social liberalism. [Read more below]

26 October 2016

Some facts about the state of unions and industrial issues in New Zealand in 2016:

As at 1 March 2015, there were 137 registered unions in New Zealand with a total of 359,782 members. Just over 18% of all employees are union members – down from 21% in 2010. The 10 largest unions had a total membership of 283,900, but 49 unions had fewer than 100 members.

Workers in education, health and community services make up over half of all union members and nearly 58% of members are women.

The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) has 35 affiliated unions, including the biggest five, and over 88% of union members belong to affiliates.